Update 28

Another Excerpt

"So, knowing what a classic is, we can see that no one who ever painted a picture, sculpted a sculpture, or wrote a book, play or piece of music knew that what they'd made was a classic, because it wasn't one yet. They might have thought it was good. But, whether it was an enduring master work of the human mind simply hadn't been tested yet, and declaring your own work to be so would be, to say the least, cheeky. 

 

This means that anybody who made the kind of art this book is concerned with, like Shakespeare for instance, made it without knowing it was a classic. He might have wanted it to be, but he made it in any case.

And that is what pop-culture is. It's what people are making now in response to the same human condition and the same world that all the classic authors and artists were dealing with. It hasn't been tested, it might not be right, but it is humanity's ongoing wrestling match with the universe and, hopefully, there are some classics in there waiting to be proven."

 © 2015 John Hiner III